Welcome to our article about the use of hashtags to monitor Instagram posts!
If you are looking to connect your Instagram Business Profile to enable Instagram monitoring, please review this article here with the setup stages.
If you'd like more tips to getting the most out of your business social profile, check out our ebook 'The Marketer's Guide to Instagram' via our Resource page here.
Monitoring through Hashtags
In December 2018, Facebook changed the information they make available to service providers such as Meltwater which has changed the way we think about Instagram monitoring.
Instagram allows users to create 30 hashtags that can be tracked through their Instagram Business Profile to bring in posts containing those hashtags. These hashtags can be created within Meltwater OR via other third-party platforms that are connected to the single Instagram Account. If a user creates hashtags outside of Meltwater, these hashtags will still count against their given 30 total, though you can have the same hashtag in multiple platforms and it will only count once.
Once your hashtags are saved within Account Information, you can further refine the volume of posts with targeting keyword searching within your social media search folders.
Hashtags to add
As the hashtags are used to filter posts into your account and the keywords within your search will filter over the top to refine to the desired results, we recommend setting the hashtags to be as broad as possible to capture more coverage.
Think of including hashtags relating to your:
Business Name
Key Spokespeople
Product names
Key locations
relating to your business
Campaign names
Business-related Event names
Acronyms of your business name,
services or products
How to add Hashtags
Select Account
Select Social Connections
On the Public Channels tab, scroll down to your connected Instagram Business profile. If your profile isn't connected yet, please follow our on-screen tour link for step by step instructions.
Select the menu icon and choose Manage Hashtags
Enter details of each hashtag into the field without the # symbol, select Add for each term before the next
You may see the possible messages below when adding Hashtags:
“The hashtag doesn’t exist” - To start monitoring a hashtag, it must be already in use on Instagram. If you see the error message "The hashtag doesn't exist," it means that the hashtag hasn't been used on Instagram yet. Don't worry, once someone includes this hashtag in an Instagram post, you'll be able to add and track it.
“You have already subscribed to 30 hashtags” - One Instagram profile can track 30 Instagram hashtags across different applications. If you receive the error message "You have already subscribed to 30 hashtags," it means that you have reached the limit for monitoring hashtags across applications.
Deleting Hashtags
To delete hashtags, simply uncheck the box when viewing all your active hashtags. We will then immediately stop pulling in data for this hashtag. However, per Facebook terms, all hashtags run on a rolling 7-day basis. So, if a user deletes a hashtag 2 days after creating it Meltwater will immediately stop pulling in posts, but you will not be able to replace that hashtag until 7 days after the hashtag deletion date.
Monitoring Business Accounts
In addition to hashtags, you can also monitor up to 50 Instagram Business verified accounts such as competitors or influencers. Once you have declared the @handles of Business Accounts that you would like to be monitoring, simply create a search with the boolean string author:"instagramhandle" to begin monitoring the brands posts. Brand monitoring is a great way to stay on top of industry conversations and trends.
For example, if you wanted to stay updated on the hospitality industry you could add hotel chains and travel influencer @handles to be monitored. Then using a search, you can see how the hotel chains are reacting to the content posted by influencers.
To add a Business Account for monitoring:
Select Account
Select Social Connections
On the Public Channels tab, scroll down to your connected Instagram Business profile
Select the menu icon and choose Manage Competitors
Enter the Business Profiles details into the field and select Add
Select Ok
Activity Log
Use the Activity Log to keep track of changes to the hashtags and brand handles that have been added to your account to monitor. Here you will be able to see both hashtags and brand handles that have been set up when they were set up, and what Instagram Business profile they are connected to. This view is very handy when keeping track of the 7 day limit on your hashtags and helps you plan out any changes you may want to make.
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